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Topic: Long Beach Coin Show Feb, 2017 (Read 2345 times)

Who is there today, and what are you seeing? I wonder if this is actually a good time to be a buyer of MCC, especially from dealers who do not specialize in pandas. Are people letting things go at reasonable prices?

All the usual players and dealers were present, with at least 6 mainland dealers.

It was a great show to sell at, brought 34 coins from home or NGC delivered them to me at the show, bought 7 coins at the show (all pre-arranged, didn't buy a single coin on the floor) and left the show with just 1 coin. Every show I wonder how many more years are left for the show business model, each show seems to be weaker than year before and expenses keep rising. The business model for doing shows is getting compressed (lower revenue and higher expenses) and smart ones are not renewing contracts and instead opting to do shows only when offered a great deal on a table. Also, 5 years ago dealers would stay until mid-Saturday before packing up, now Thursday afternoon some start packing, by Friday the best ones are gone. I left at 3pm on Thursday with no plans to return even though my flight is for Friday afternoon. Thanks to rain storm, my airline let me fly home Thursday night without any change fee.

In closing, with supply so tight, I am looking forward to the next spike in prices.

Sorry for the newbie question, but how exactly did you go about selling your coins at a show? Did you buy a table, or did you just bring them around to dealers, show them all the coins, and make individual deals on coins they were interested in? Or is there an auction going on at some of these shows that you listed them in?

I am just a light collector and I am looking to sell some coins, but I am never sure of the proper etiquette for making a cash deal at a coin show.

After you have been selling for years you know who is buying and at what price.

1) For newbies it is best to walk around and sell to dealers. Buy prices are 10-40% below ebay sold prices, common stuff and items below $500/unit 40% below ebay, rare stuff or or items above $1500 10% below ebay. I pre-arrange almost all my transactions so I don't have to spend more than a day at the show. For example, you send me a picture of all your coins and we work out a price and then at the show we do the transaction with both sides committed to the transaction. The only challenge is when the market is hot and dealers want to buy, collectors hold on tight to their coins because they don't want to miss out on higher price so they miss the opportunity to sell at near market prices, when the market is cold then collectors become motivated to sell and at those times dealers are offering 20-40% below the market prices because they are scared to catch a falling knife. The secret is to sell when the market wants the coins and buy when the market doesn't want you coins.

2) You can also get a table, but the cost is $1000, plus three nights of hotel. It is almost impossible to pay off the table fee by selling for a premium compared to what dealers offer you in option 1). If you have got $20,000 worth of coins that you think you can easily sell, then having a table maybe ok. The real reason to have a table is to buy, not sell. In recent years for MCC almost all transactions are pre-arranged so opportunity to buy is very limited unless the market is really cold.

3) Ebay is often the best venue for new sellers, ebay + paypal fee is 10% all-in, which is comparable to what dealers will offer you on rare stuff, but cheap for the common stuff. The best part you will learn what the market really thinks about your coins because you will be selling directly to collectors.

Regardless which option you decide to pursue to sell your coins, the most important thing is to do your research. There are a lot of free resources to help you decide what is reasonable price for your coins, view sold transactions.

The above sources account for 85% of all PUBLIC market transactions for MCC so they should give a reasonable view of the market. However, keep in mind 95-98% of the market transactions are NON-PUBLIC so the price that you might get could be different from what your research suggest, simply because the PUBLIC market is not representative of what PRIVATE market is transacting at. This often happens when the market is very hot or very cold. During these times almost everything is sold privately and public transactions are often lagging the market by months to quarters. This is why I put so little value in price guides and even the above sources when the market is very hot or cold, which is when most of the opportunities exist.

Thank you very much for that post, it was very informative and helpful! Especially the 40% - 10% information and the specific sites you listed for pricing outside eBay. That will help me figure out ballpark pricing depending on where I sell.

Wednesday is dealer set up day and mainland Chinese buying day. I had 2 pre-arranged buys and 5 pre-arranged sales for the day. What was left I offered to mainland dealers and they bought up all my ms66-68 gold pandas and bullion related coins (common proof sets, common omps).

Thursday is first public day, I had 4 pre-arranged buys and 2 pre-arranged sales for the day and NGC delivered about 15 coins to me. What was left I offered to mainland dealers and they bought up all ms66-68 gold pandas and few MS69 gold pandas and year of child.

Besides the above I made no new buys or sales at the show, everything was either pre-arranged or sold to mainland dealers. No retail buying or selling at the show and I don't blame them, even if you live 30 minutes from Long Beach, it is like 2-3 hour round trip, $15 parking fee and missing a day of work, why bother with all the hassle when online is so much easier - this is even worse for mainland dealer that has to 30+ hours of flight time and a lot of expenses. Predicting when the show model will die to online sales is like predicting when will big box retail die to Amazon. Sooner the show organizers go out the business the better it will be for dealers, investors and collectors as the overhead to do business will go down. I had a lot of email and web site sales this month, which is further proof that shows in the US are no longer retail friendly.

Very little new supply has come to market in the last 2 weeks, I think the goldsheet bump which led to mass dumping by those that didn't know their coins were worth so much has played out and now we are back to declining availability of supply.

Will we reach a stage in which modern Chinese coins will not be available in the USA at coin shows or via the internet? You mentioned the lack of new material. You mentioned the persistent purchase of our remaining inventory by mainland Chinese dealers. Will this eventually result in the disappearance of most, if not all, of the modern Chinese coins from the USA? Are you having problems replenishing your inventory?

Sooner the show organizers go out the business the better it will be for dealers, investors and collectors as the overhead to do business will go down. I had a lot of email and web site sales this month, which is further proof that shows in the US are no longer retail friendly.

but once the shows disappear, we won't get to have our little face to face chats that i enjoy. outside of shows, there's so little personal interaction in this field, i will lament it when real shows no longer exist. it was nice to see you and talk at long beach.

Thanks Arif. In the past couple of years I was not able to find any MCC worthy of buying at coins shows here in Houston; used to be able to find a few. No doubt Supply is drying. Good to know mainland dealers are aggresive buyers. I was wondering if their buying power is affected by China's tighter and tigher money control policy. And I guess the anticipated market softness is short lived. Very good news!

As for coin shows here in the US, it has been like an event mainly for dealers to meet and trade coins between themselves. Coins shows may be ok for retail buyers but terrible for sellers. For US coins, a dealer usually would only want to pay 70% of the dealer bid price, which means you get punished for not being a dealer by a 30% price cut of your coin. I quit collecting US coins long ago because of such bad experience.

Will we reach a stage in which modern Chinese coins will not be available in the USA at coin shows or via the internet? You mentioned the lack of new material. You mentioned the persistent purchase of our remaining inventory by mainland Chinese dealers. Will this eventually result in the disappearance of most, if not all, of the modern Chinese coins from the USA? Are you having problems replenishing your inventory?

Mark Bonke

Mark; Arif can answer your question but i gotta butt in and say i agree w/ you that inventory of MCC will soon be gone to China. Because MCC have been mostly sideways in price lately, i started tracking Empire small silvers or 100 yr old like the Kwangtung dragon designs. In the last few weeks demand has gone up as have prices. Maybe i will send a list of sold dragons w/ sell dates to CCL but he probably is already on top of it. Fewer get listed and those at semi reasonable prices sell quick now, BIN for MS grades or bid too. I remember when prices were about $50, then they went to $100, not anymore.....I think this segment of the market is seeing more action then MCC.............jeeper creepers.........who got the .....